TONY STEWART – So, You Think You Can Dance?
KANNAPOLIS, N.C., (April 12, 2011) – With the exception of Helio Castroneves, the IZOD IndyCar Series driver who won season five’s Dancing With The Stars competition, there’s not a racecar driver around who would consider themselves a good dancer, at least on the dance floor. But on the racetrack, that’s a much different story, especially for drivers in the elite NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, and especially at the two restrictor-plate tracks they visit – Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway and Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.
The two venues represent a very different style of racing – one that even Carrie Ann Inaba, Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli could appreciate, as both ballroom dancing and dancing in a restrictor-plate draft require proper footwork, excellent communication and, above all, trust.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the season-opening Daytona 500, where drivers had to align themselves in two-car drafts to make any headway toward the front of the field. It created a dicey game of bumper cars that sometimes led to drivers involuntarily spinning out their dancing… err, drafting partner. And in those two-car drafts, the drivers had to work together, for the second car couldn’t run behind the lead car for more than eight laps, otherwise its engine would overheat. That meant the two drivers had to coordinate a 200 mph swap, with the lead car drifting high or low to allow his partner to scoot past, whereupon the former leader of the two-car draft assumed the role of pusher.
This dance took place among 43 cars for 500 miles, and it will take place again in Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 at Talladega.
Fresh pavement and an updated aerodynamic package for 2011 created this brave new world of restrictor-plate racing, jettisoning the old, freight-train style of racing where all 43 cars would run in a single pack, destined to be derailed. There are still derailments in this new modern dance, but the participants have more options and more maneuverability than they ever had before.
For Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 14 Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevrolet Impala for Stewart-Haas Racing, that’s a good thing. With more of the race in his hands, he was a contender throughout the Daytona 500, running as high as second with two laps remaining. But while the dance moves were new, he still needed a partner to pull them off, and in those waning laps, Stewart found himself without the help he needed to take the lead. Instead, he fell back to 13th and watched as someone else danced in Daytona’s victory lane.
Talladega presents Stewart with another opportunity to tango, and thanks to the knowledge gained from Daytona, expect the two-time Sprint Cup champion to perform like Fred Astaire on Talladega’s 2.66-mile dance floor.